02 January 1894
Dear Mr. Blackwood,
You will forgive, I hope, the presumption of a stranger's letter. I write on the authority of my friend Miss Pauline Marsh, whose brother, I believe, was at Oxford with you. She assures me that Blackwood & Everly reads what it receives, which is recommendation enough for me to try.
I am writing a collection of essays. They concern themselves, broadly, with the relationship between truth and its depiction in fiction- whether the novel is better served by beauty or by honesty, and whether the two are, in the end, the same animal wearing different coats. I have been told this is either a very interesting question or a very old one. I suspect it is both.
I have enclosed the first essay, which is the shortest and perhaps the strangest, and so either the worst place to begin or the best. It is called On Masks. It asks whether a character who conceals himself from the reader is a liar, or simply a person.
I do not know if this is something that would interest Blackwood & Everly. I confess I am more nervous than I expected to be in sending it. I mention this only because the essay argues, among other things, that honesty is the only real craft, and it seemed hypocritical not to practice it here.
I am,
C.J. Bramwell
